Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication refers to all communication technologies and ways that establish a connection between the machines. The concept of M2M communication is currently the focus of many communication equipment manufacturers and telecom operators. Currently the number of machines all around the world is a lot more than the number of people, so it can be anticipated that there is a huge demand on the M2M technology.
Researches on M2M communication application scenarios indicate that providing the M2M communication on a mobile network has a potential market prospect. Existing mobile communication networks are mainly designed for human-to-human communication, and are less optimized for machine-to-machine and man-to-machine communications. Moreover, how the operators provide the M2M communication service at a low cost is a key of a success of M2M communication deployment. For a variety of new requirements of the M2M service on the system, in order to enhance the mobile network's competitiveness in this area, it is necessary to optimize the existing mobile networks to more efficiently support the M2M communication.
Based on the above condition, it is necessary to study solutions for the mobile network supporting the M2M communication, and the solutions should maximize reuse of the existing networks to reduce the impact of a large number of M2M communications on the network as well as the complexity of operation and maintenance for the network.
In order to effectively utilize mobile network resources, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposed Machine Type Communication (MTC), namely as Machine to Machine and Machine to Man, to communicate, its service scope is far beyond previous Human to Human (H2H) communication. The MTC is very different from the existing H2H communication mode in access control, charging, security, Quality of Service (QoS), service mode, and other aspects.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the architecture of the 3GPP mobile communication network. As shown in FIG. 1, a radio access network (such as Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN), evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN)) and a core network, for example, an Evolved Packet Core network (EPC) is provided with network elements such as Mobility Management Entity (MME), serving gateway, and Public Data Network gateway (PDN Gateway), a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) core network comprises network elements such as the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN); the E-UTRAN comprises an evolved Node B (eNB); wherein the E-UTRAN is connected with the MME/S-GW in the EPC via an S1 interface, and the UTRAN is connected with the SGSN via an Iu interface.
The purpose of paging is to indicate a called information request or a system information change to a target User Equipment (UE), the target UE which receives a paging message establishes a connection with network side or reads the changed system information according to an indication of the paging message. Paging scope is generally a registered area of the UE, and a page is generally sent at a particular time point, and the particular time point is obtained by a UE Identity and paging period calculation, so that each UE has a corresponding paging time point. No matter in an idle state or a connected state, the UE monitors the page in its own paging time point. A paging process is initiated by the MME/SGSN at the network side, and sent to the paging area where the target UE is located through the E-UTRAN/UTRAN, and the target UE receives the corresponding paging message at the paging time point.
For a battery-powered MTC UE, it needs to take measures to reduce power consumption of the UE. For a power supply powered MTC UE, it also needs to reduce power consumption of the UE to achieve a goal of green energy-saving.
Currently, smart phones gradually become popular, and a large number of applications are running on the smart phones. These applications may result in increased battery power consumption of the smart phones, thereby battery life is shortened. Therefore power saving of the smart phones is also a key issue to be addressed urgently.
Discontinuous Reception (DRX) is a technique which reduces the power consumption of the UE, the UE in a DRX sleeping state shuts down most of receiving and sending circuits to achieve the power-saving purpose. The DRX can be used in a radio resource control connected (RRC Connected, hereinafter referred to as connected) mode and a radio resource control idle (RRC Idle, hereinafter referred to as idle) mode, wherein the DRX in the idle mode is a paging DRX.
To further reduce power consumption of the UE, an existing research proposes a scheme using an extended DRX period, for example, the extended DRX paging period is used to reduce the power consumption of the UE in the idle mode.
In the process of researching and practicing the related art, the prior art is found to have following problems:
currently the UE selects a minimum value according to an upper layer indication and the paging period of system information broadcast when determining the paging period. Therefore, even though the MME/SGSN at the network side uses the extended paging period, the UE still uses the relatively short default paging period in system information, thus the meaning of using the extended DRX paging period is lost.